He was James Madison's teacher at Princeton. 6 of the 55 signers of the U.S. Constitution have his signature on their diploma. He might be the most influential teacher in American history. He's the only cleric to sign the Declaration of Independence.
New Criterion reports on John Witherspoon:
In May 1776, when the colonies teetered on the edge of war with England, he preached a sermon titled “Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men.” The church historian William Warren Sweet called it “one of the most influential pulpit utterances during the whole course of the war.” Arguing that “There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire,” Witherspoon articulated a link between spiritual and temporal liberty in a way that that spoke vividly to the passions of the moment. In July 1776, when the question of succession was hotly debated and one delegate argued that the country was not yet “ripe” for independence, Witherspoon shot back: “In my judgement the country is not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of becoming rotten for the want of it.”
Here's the
London Times on Witherspoon:
John Witherspoon, who helped to draft the American Declaration of Independence, is the man now believed to have coined the expression “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, words usually credited to the English philospher John Locke.
